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From a worker-owned restaurant in Oakland to a nonprofit built on shared leadership, we explore how collective work models can help people feel heard, valued, and more invested in their work.
Summary: In this episode of The Science of Happiness, we examine how people can build cultures of care, accountability, and belonging together. Through stories from a worker-owned restaurant and insights from a leader in collective nonprofits, we share what research reveals about why collective decision-making can help teams thrive and organizations succeed.
Today’s Guests:
NINO SERRANO AND JENABI PAREJA are the co-founders of Understory, a worker-owned and community-built restaurant in Oakland.
Learn more about Understory here: https://understoryoakland.com/
NILOUFAR KHONSARI is the co-founder of Pangea Legal Services, a nonprofit that defends immigrants facing deportation and the author of the book, Future is Collective: Effective Workplace Strategies for Building a Culture of Care.
Read the book here: https://www.niloukhonsari.com/thebook
Related The Science of Happiness episodes:
How to Talk to People You Disagree With: https://tinyurl.com/4cpm8m3a
When It’s Hard to Connect, Try Being Curious: https://tinyurl.com/bde6wyu7
Why Compassion Requires Vulnerability: https://tinyurl.com/yxw4uhpf
Related Happiness Breaks:
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Transcription:
FLORENCIO ESQUIVEL: Collective leadership really opens doors. It really opens portals
RUBY TRAN: From the hospitality to the care put into the food, and like just how we work as a team, I feel like is so special and different from working at any other restaurant.
B: Everyone has some kind of skill or expertise or passion that deserves to be lifted up and centered.
ESPERANZA: Every person I know that works here is. Just so happy to be here, which I don't think you always hear from like restaurant workers or just people who often have to work in customer service.
RUBY TRAN: We feel supported at all times.
FLORENCIO ESQUIVEL: Why would you do this work any other way?
SHUKA KALANTARI: Welcome to the Science of Happiness. I'm Shuka Kalantari. For many of us, the idea that everyone deserves a seat at the table is a core value. We all wanna have a voice, but in reality, that's not always how things play out. Leadership tends to be top down, especially in our workplaces. But what if it wasn't?
RUBY TRAN: It doesn't feel like work, like being here. It feels like chilling with your family or hanging out with your family, kind of in a way, you know,
SHUKA KALANTARI: In this episode, we're joined by the founders of Understory, a collectively run restaurant in Oakland, California. We hear about how mutual respect and shared values led them to success and purpose in the workplace. Later we'll talk with Niloufar Khonsari, author of the Future is Collective Effective Workplace Strategies for Building a Culture of Care. She'll share some of the ins and outs of building a collective nonprofit.
NILOUFAR KHONSARI: Better decisions and outcomes come about when more insight and more expertise is brought in. There are multiple studies on that front, and it has proven itself to be very true in my experience as well,
SHUKA KALANTARI: How to create a more collective culture, after these messages from our sponsors.
SHUKA KALANTARI: Welcome back to The Science of Happiness. I'm Shuka Kalantari. Today we're looking at more cooperative ways to exist in the workplace. We begin in Oakland, California.
RUBY TRAN: There's so much heart here and you could feel it through like everything.
SHUKA KALANTARI: That's Ruby Tran. She's on track to become a worker owner at Understory, a collectively operated restaurant in the Fruitvale District of Oakland.They're celebrating a milestone most restaurants never reach: five years in business. to prepare, the crew cooked up a bunch of food.
SUNSHINE VELASCO: We got some Pandesal. Look at this. We bake about, maybe 700 Pandesal.
SHUKA KALANTARI: That's Sunshine Velasco.
SUNSHINE VELASCO: Pandesal is a Filipino roll. But we veganized it
SHUKA KALANTARI: For Sunshine, this is a triumph for the community.
SUNSHINE VELASCO: I feel good. It's nice to have, uh, the community come out and celebrate with us. That's always our number one mission and vision to always have a space for like-minded people.
SHUKA KALANTARI: Research shows when teams share leadership instead of relying on a hierarchy. People enjoy their work more and feel more invested in what they do. Florencio Esquivel, a founding member, says it also allows people to dream bigger.
FLORENCIO ESQUIVEL: Collective leadership really opens portals that probably would not have been possible otherwise. You know, it's nice to be able to support each other in these visions and to like have expanded dreams together. It's also nice to create a support system for making those dreams happen and to honor each other along like in that process is something that can help you feel a sense of wonder and awe, and I think it's hot and I like it.
TRUC NGUYEN: What did Nino just bring out?
FLORENCIO ESQUIVEL: She brought out the pancit our, uh, vegan pancit noodles, delicioso.
SHUKA KALANTARI: We're exploring what becomes possible when we rethink power structures with two co-founders of Thunder Story Collective: Nino Serrano and Jenabi Pareja. Nino and Jenabi, thanks for joining us on the Science of Happiness.
JENABI PAREJA: Thanks for having us.
SHUKA KALANTARI: You're both co-founders of Understory and you decided to start a collective restaurant during the height of the COVID Pandemic, which was a time of a lot of uncertainty for the industry. And in the United States alone, about 5.5 million restaurant jobs had disappeared. Nearly half of the industry's workforce. What were you thinking?
JENABI PAREJA: We were crazy. Each of us got either laid off of work or had reduced like hours. But on the flip side of that, we were all doing a lot of mutual aid work, so we were actually cooking food and distributing food to the houseless in Oakland. And it really gave us an opportunity to give a contribution to the movement of what a just community centered business or restaurant industry could look like. What shared leadership, livable wage, and community power could really be, where so many things feels uncertain, we wanted to find ways to make things feel less scary.
SHUKA KALANTARI: How about you Nino?
NINO SERRANO: Actually, my family, they came during the pandemic from the Philippines before the lockdown. They came here and then I have a job on that time. I'm thinking a lot on that time because the pandemic hit, we don't know what to do and a lot of people sick, you know? But when I go to the Understory and we have a meeting and we talk about, like, how to build this restaurant. I love hearing the vision and the mission for this restaurant, and then I decided to join with them. I work a lot in America before I go to The Understory, but tThe Understory is different. We. All the boss, even the decision making, it's not one person. So I said, oh, this is cool. And top of that, like, because we are all chef, we're doing our own food. I was thinking like, oh, this is win-win. Because I learned from Jenabi, I learned from Florencio, and Lily, at the same time, they learn from me.
SHUKA KALANTARI: What's the story behind the name of your restaurant? Understory.
JENABI PAREJA: Understory is actually the second level of the forest, and that helps the forest grow and thrive. So we also use it as a play on word of understory for us being the radical, rambunctious chefs and organizers, the underdog in the industry, flipping it upside down.
SHUKA KALANTARI: Studies find that when organizations are run like that in this empowering, inclusive way, it helps people stick around in their jobs, feel happier, and actually perform better overall in their work. In what ways do you see that in your own collective, and why do you think that is? You can also speak in Tagalog and you can translate, Jenabi.
JENABI PAREJA: Oh, great.
SHUKA KALANTARI: If you want.
NINO SERRANO: Okay. Starts speaking in Tagalog
JENABI PAREJA: Nino says that in Understory, people show up to the table, will already have a mutual respect with each other. It's not about being told what to do, it's because we have this common respect, but also come to the table feeling like success of one meets the success of everyone in the collective.
SHUKA KALANTARI: For this episode, I also spoke with Niloufar Khonsari, who wrote a book about collective leadership based on their own experience, and she emphasized how important it is for a collective to clearly name and list its shared values. How do your own values and the values you share as a collective come into play when running this restaurant?
JENABI PAREJA: The values and missions of Understory was deeply rooted around worker agency and we wanted to prioritize the need of the people that make this business. What does it mean for us to pay folks livable wage? To give people's full benefits? What does it look like for all of us to get paid the same? But if one collective member has a family of six, what does that look like for this person to actually get paid more? And having those particular discussions that you wouldn't necessarily see in a, quote unquote “traditional” restaurant. People might think we're crazy and say that 50% of our budget goes into labor, but that's something that we applaud ourselves and it feels radical for folks, but it feels pretty simple to us.
SHUKA KALANTARI: What are one or two other values that you guys created?
JENABI PAREJA: Yeah.
SHUKA KALANTARI: Or that you guys came up with?
JENABI PAREJA: One of our compasses is our community offering, which is a pay as you can sliding scale food program that we have at the restaurant because we firmly believe that people should have access to food regardless of your ability to pay. Folks can come up to us and be like, ‘Hey, I don't have money this week. Can I pay you next week?’
Our answer has always been like, ‘why don't you save it and tell anyone else that might need that kind of support?’
And then the other one too is acknowledging our role in resisting like gentrification. What is our role going into a community that's predominantly migrant and working class? How do we make our food accessible, but also how do we make our food be part of the community?
SHUKA KALANTARI: What would you say are like the top lessons you've learned about shared leadership and how do you hope that can inspire how we approach power in general at work, in our communities, in our personal lives?
JENABI PAREJA: You might not know the answer now, but it doesn't mean that you're gonna be the sole responsible person to answer that question.
I know that I can easily look at Nino and be like, ‘Nino, can you help me do this?’ And I know that he wouldn't bat an eye, and I know none of other collective members would say no because they're there to also see the success of this business, but also see the success of each other. And that makes me feel much lighter because it's not just on you anymore. You're with a collective.
SHUKA KALANTARI: How about you, Nino? How does it feel going from being in a restaurant industry where you're often overworked and underpaid to now being a leader, a co-leader in a restaurant, even when English isn't your first language and you know, a lot of immigrants, a lot of marginalized communities don't get to be leaders in the restaurant industry or any industry.
How does it feel to make that shift after 20 years that you had been in a restaurant to being at the head of the table with other people?
NINO SERRANO: Understory…switches to Tagalog
JENABI PAREJA: He said that he only knew one thing and that is to work. He knew how to grind, and when he would work for other people's like restaurants, he would do what he was told and was asked to do. But oftentimes in those situations, it turned my kindness into more of an abusive and extractive like relationship. And despite that, people say that there's only one way or just like one system to do these things.
I, being at Understory, have seen that there isn't just like one model to follow and there's an opportunity to create new ones. So I think that's what makes me feel really excited, but also feel very much confident in Understory and creating those new system for folks to follow.
SHUKA KALANTARI: Coming from a place of kindness and cooperation is much better for your health than than being in a chronic stress, which we know is bad for our longevity.
JENABI PAREJA: I know.
SHUKA KALANTARI: Thank you both again for coming on the show, and again, I can't wait to head to Oakland and try out the food.
JENABI PAREJA: Yeah. Come visit.
SHUKA KALANTARI: Next we hear from Niloufar Khonsari, co-founder of Pangea Legal Services, a nonprofit that defends immigrants facing deportation. She shares how an early case revealed the strength of collective action.
NILOUFAR KHONSARI: We advocated, we collected over 5,000 signatures. We petitioned ICE. We made phone calls. We held rallies in front of the ice building and had media turnout.
And one morning after one of the protests, Jesús called me and said, Hey, Nilou, I'm famous. And the energy of the community gave him the hope to continue with his case, building stronger, more fruitful organizations after this break.
SHUKA KALANTARI: Welcome back to The Science of Happiness. I'm Chuka Kaari. We've been talking about how shared leadership can make the workplace feel better. Studies find it can also improve the quality of our decisions and make teams stronger and more efficient. Here to share her experience building a collective is Niloufar Khonsari, a former immigration lawyer and consultant.
She's also the author of The Future is Collective Effective Workplace Strategies for Building a Culture of Care. Nilou, it's great to have you here with us today.
NILOUFAR KHONSARI: Thanks for having Shuka.
SHUKA KALANTARI: You've shared that as an Iranian immigrant, you're not immune to these hierarchical models of leadership. How did that look like in the workplace?
NILOUFAR KHONSARI: In the workplace, it looked like me setting these very high expectations for myself, and then also setting these very high expectations on my colleagues and. They were not helpful, and in fact they were harmful to collective work. This idea of perfectionism. Perfectionism is a fiction and you know, it ultimately dawned on me years later when I had a child, oh my gosh, like my colleagues want me to take time off so that it can feel more okay for them to do it too.
SHUKA KALANTARI: In the Future is Collective, you write about a client named Jesús who became a turning point for you, and how you think about building power with clients and staff and not just advocating for them. Can you tell us about Jesús and what that experience showed you about collective action?
NILOUFAR KHONSARI: Yes. Jesús was one of my first detained clients as a young attorney when I was starting out. His dad called me up one day and said, ‘Hey, can you represent my son? He just was picked up by ICE’ and I said, yes, sure. I drove down to the station where he was being held, the ICE facility in San Jose, California, and entered my attorney appearance, stopped the deportation temporarily, and began calling.
And talking to all the senior attorneys that I knew and one after another these attorneys turned to me and said, ‘Nilou, this is a no win case.’ But the organizers I spoke with that I turned to, they told me, ‘No Nilou, it's not about if Jesús is gonna get out of prison, it's when we're gonna get him out.’ So I went with that, I went with the community. I went with those who were directly impacted and who had some hope. We advocated, we collected over 5,000 signatures. We petitioned ICE. We made phone calls, we held rallies in front of the ICE building and had media turnout and had signs saying, free Jesús, pictures of him. One morning after one of the protests, Jesús called me and said, ‘Hey, Nilou, I'm famous.’
He called me from prison. And he’s like, ‘I'm famous, you know, I wanna keep fighting, you know, thank you’. And the energy of the community gave him the hope to continue with his case. After three months and right before the holidays, before Christmas, we got him out. The advocacy and the campaign worked, and what that really showed me and taught me was this incredible act of collective action by the community and by those who are impacted, is an extra legal and extra powerful form of advocacy. And from there on, my work and my colleagues and I very much dedicated ourselves to listening to what our clients and community and the people who are the most impacted had to say, and really believe in the power of justice from that place.
SHUKA KALANTARI: The foundational idea behind The Future is Collective is that we should all have a seat at the table because we all have different insights and experiences to share. What does it look like in action?
NILOUFAR KHONSARI: Yeah. One of the themes in the book is we all want to be heard. People do ultimately want to be heard and have a say, especially in workplaces where there's values alignment around the mission and around the purpose of the organization. And when we don't make spaces and when we don't get intentional around that, what we see is a lot of burnout. Faster rates of burnout. We see people checking out. We see a discontent and like a weakening in the purpose and the way that the mission is being moved forward. And so it creates this like antagonistic environment, this “us versus them.”
And what I see when groups get very intentional around making space and processes for people to be heard and for input to be taken and for there being more empowerment and leadership across organizations is, really the opposite. Higher retention, extremely high rates of retention. I see people really being engaged and bought into the work, invested and really going above and beyond in a lot of cases, but also being held and cared for.
I have seen people really flourish and grow and build their voices over time as they practice and are invited into giving their feedback and when they see their feedback as being meaningfully integrated, when they see that their feedback is not being shut down or responded to in a dismissive way, it grows and it really flourishes.
And there are multiple studies on that front, and it has proven itself to be very true in my experience as well.
SHUKA KALANTARI: In order to have a collective leadership, you've shared that we need to create a culture of care, and I love the way you talk about how, you know, culture is our lived environment, but culture is also something that we actively create and that we have to be intentional. What does building a culture of care look like in action?
NILOUFAR KHONSARI: The number one place that I would really recommend for people is starting by developing a set of written values that are defined. So not just, you know, we value integrity or we value care, single words, but what does that mean in our workplace? What does that mean when we're doing it well? What does it mean when we're not doing it enough? Really defining it with a few sentences and having shared language and a shared understanding around those core values. That's a key foundation for a culture that's aligned with a team.
SHUKA KALANTARI: You started a legal services collective, Pangea, many years ago and created it in a circular model. What does that model look like?
NILOUFAR KHONSARI: Yeah. That model can look like as many different ways as there are organizations. One way that it can look like was the way that Pangea was modeled, which was fully decentralized, where we had eight hubs. Which are like eight decision making committees. So we had a finance hub, an income hub, we had an HR hub, there was a governance hub.
There were multiple different hubs, and the decisions did not have to come back through what often happens in many organizations, which is a bottleneck, like they did not have to come back through one person. They just were made in these hubs, in these committees. There was real strength and rootedness because there was this decentralized authority and this investment and time given to sharing the knowledge and sharing the expertise, and transferring a lot of expertise to other staff and other members.
SHUKA KALANTARI: Aligned or parallel with this idea of collective leadership is collective intelligence. Research out at the Max Planck Institute shows that groups consistently make more accurate decisions collectively than alone. But, and here's the, but, the system only works when people can accurately assess their own uncertainty, like knowing when to step back, knowing when to check their ego, and so, how do we learn to check our ego when we're making these collective decisions in your experience?
NILOUFAR KHONSARI: So I think there are two parts to this. One is the personal. There's a lot of personal ego unpacking and work that we need to do, and it's something that I have been on a journey on for quite some time and it's ongoing.
The other is, there are some facilitation tools and support that we can create for folks to check that ego and to limit and right size their input. And one might be, in facilitating a conversation for where you're requesting some input and feedback, rather than saying, how do people feel or what do you think? Here's the proposal: what do you think? You might right size or contain that question and say, let's do a go-around and tell us from a scale of one to 10, how much information do you have, or how comfortable do you feel with this topic? How impacted are you with this topic and then offering another tool or template in a chat or in a document, you know, everybody share one thing you appreciate about this proposal and one thing that you think that could be better.
These are simple tools. These are tools many facilitators use, and these are also tools that are very much supportive of collective governance and folks bringing in feedback and really containing some outsized input from certain very vocal people that we all have in many of our organizations.
SHUKA KALANTARI: We are talking right now about collective leadership in the nonprofit sectors. What do you think about this concept? You know, intersecting with our broader movements for like equity, justice, and inclusion, climate health, and you know, everything in between.
NILOUFAR KHONSARI: It's very much present in our own human history and our own ancestors. Indigenous people in the United States have modeled and have had practices of land stewardship that are very much collective. I was born in Iran, and in our culture and in Iran, there's very much a collective sense and this feeling of putting the whole before the individual, it's very much present in our gatherings and in the way that we share food and the way that we share in community with each other. It definitely transcends the nonprofit sector, this work of collectivism or participatory decision making, the messages of, you know, collective leadership, shared leadership. You can give them all the different labels and they're all gonna have different meanings and shapes and different groups. Any group of two or more is gonna be different, but the concepts and the underlying message of people wanna be heard and people wanna be understood is pretty universal in for-profit corporations and nonprofit organizations and movements and any sector across.
I hope that the message can be transferable and universally welcomed and applied.
SHUKA KALANTARI: Well, Niloufar Khonsari, thank you so much for The Future is Collective and for joining us on the Science of Happiness.
NILOUFAR KHONSARI: Thank you so much for having Shuka. It was a real pleasure.
SHUKA KALANTARI: Next time on The Science of Happiness, we're kicking off our series on CIties of Awe, exploring how public spaces can spark, wonder, and how awe emerges when we engage with the world and allow ourselves to be moved.
BLAINE MERKER: The streets allowed you to make choices. There wasn't just one way to do things. There was a million ways to do things.
SETHA LOW: You can't think of any revolution or even change in a country that didn't somehow start in a public space where people could come together and hear one another.
SHUKA KALANTARI: That's next time on The Science of Happiness.
Thank you all for listening. Our associate producers are Emily Brower, Tarini Kakkar, and Anna Zou. Our producer is Truc Nguyen. Our sound designer is Jenny Cataldo of Accompany Studios. I'm the executive producer Shuka Kalantari, in for our host Dacher Keltner. Have a great day.
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